African American Income Inequality

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Economic inequality has been a detrimental issue to women and minorities who have been oppressed throughout American history. African Americans, in particular, have been largely affected by discrimination in education and the work force. They had been provided unequal opportunities in college application and employment before affirmative action was enacted by federal laws. Affirmative action(………………..) In 1961, President Kennedy issued the Executive Order 10925, which began the elimination of racial bias and ensuring equal opportunity for all Americans for employment. President Lyndon B. Johnson took affirmative action even further with the Civil Right Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination for all minorities on the basis of color, religion, …show more content…
According to Nathan Marwell, a PhD student in Economics for the University of Wisconsin, wage disparities between African-Americans and Caucasian-Americans saw an improvement throughout the 1960s. Black men earned only 58% of white men's wages in 1960, but earned 72% by 1970. However, this percentage had remained constant until the year 2000, when black males improved to making 80% of their white counterparts.
Years of greater economic opportunity after affirmative action had led to the growth of African-American incomes, which has significantly progressed more than other groups. “The raw numbers from last year's [2001] census show that blacks have made considerable economic and educational progress during the 1990s. Black median household income grew 15 percent between 1989 and 1999, compared with 6 percent for white families; and the number of black-owned firms increased 26 percent from 1992 to 1997, compared with a 7 percent increase for U.S. firms overall
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Employment disparities between whites and blacks have not seen a significant change. Unemployment rates among African-Americans have continued to be higher than other ethnics groups. According to Tami Luhby, a senior writer for CNNMoney, as of October 2015, unemployment rates for African-Americans are over double that of their white counterparts, reaching 9.2 percent compared to 4.4 percent for whites. Luhby also found that it takes African-Americans, on average, five more weeks to find a job after being employed than whites. While federal laws prohibit discrimination during the employment process, it does not prevent employers from being biased against, or for, an ethnic